Ryan Reynolds, just so wrong for an M&S ad. Photograph: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Do I need glasses or did I see that Ryan Reynolds is starring in a Marks & Spencer advert?

Joe, by email

Cancel that appointment to the optometrist, Joe: your eyes are in perfect condition, which is more than one can see about poor Ryan Reynolds's career.

Call me a crazy Marxist, but I find the sight of obscenely wealthy celebrities shilling brands in embarrassing adverts unacceptably nauseating and, yes, I'm looking at you, Jennifer Aniston, and I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why you had to take off your top to advertise a particular brand of water that claims to improve your intelligence. That you agreed to that request from the creative director somewhat undermines the promises of the product you are selling, surely. Anyway.

I have no inside knowledge of Ryan's personal finances, but I'm assuming it's not starvation that drove him to pose moodily in an ad for M&S's ridiculously overpriced Autograph line. To be fair, the photo of him hunched over Poutie Huntington-Whiteley is less irritating than those godawful movie posters for The Change-Up, featuring him smirking while being being pawed by some female feet. But it does still feature Ryan, a man whose career has yet to find a point.

Look, I'm sure he is a perfectly nice gentleman, even if he has an unfortunate habit of appearing in terrible films. But this collaboration between him and M&S is deeply unflattering on both sides. For Ryan, it just looks as if his career has managed to sink to a depth even lower than that of The Proposal and The Change-Up, a depth heretofore unplumbed. Truly, following in the noble steps of Myleene Klass is a novel route to take to the A-list, Ryan.

Yet if Ryan comes off badly here, then M&S looks even worse. Clearly "desperate and laughable" are its trends this season. Hunky Ryan is so ridiculously wrong for cosy M&S that one can only assume the bods there simply jumped at the chance of having A REAL-LIFE HOLLYWOOD ACTOR in the adverts without pausing to think about his suitability, like a tragic groupie happy to sleep with any celebrity, no matter how ugly, purely for the anecdote.

Moreover, there is something of the "advertising whisky in Japan" to this whole schtick. This, as all students of lame celebrity ruses know, refers to celebrities who star in embarrassing adverts abroad in the belief that they can pocket the fat fees without anyone back home knowing, and is named in honour of Lost in Translation, in which Bill Murray does exactly that. That this film starred Ryan's ex-wife Scarlett Johansson makes the comparison all the more obvious and crushing.

So in short, Ryan is starring in a new film called Scraping the Barrel and M&S is silly, starstruck and irrelevant. Soooo not a good look.

I was brought up in a household where it was frowned on if you were caught buying a Barbour jacket, let alone keeping the Barbour-brand pin-badge on it post-purchase. Now you can't move for people wearing Barbours where the branding is actually sewn on the outside. Is this really acceptable?

Guy East, Salisbury

No, Guy, it most certainly is not. But it sounds to me as if the household you were brought up in was a properly posh one; one that felt no need to prove its poshness by displaying labels that pretended to be posh. All of which does make one ask, how on earth did you happen upon the Guardian? Perhaps the village shoppe was out of Horse & Hound one morning.

But these people, for whom you now cannot move, are, you see, Not Quite Our Class Dear, or, to be precise, Not Quite Your Class Dear, seeing as I am not posh, hailing from the vulgar New World, as I do.

So what they are doing is partaking in the ridiculous fashion trend of inverse inverse snobbery, which takes the classic British pastime of inverse snobbery (pretending not to be posh even when one has grown up in a castle because you want to be more housing estate than proper estate, like) and inverted it again to praise poshness but, like, in an ironic way, yah? Hence the popularity of things such as Hunter wellingtons, Sloaney blazers, penny loafers and, yes, Barbour. Think of these sad folk as being like tourists to Paris who attempt to fit in by wearing Breton tops and flinging necklaces of garlic about their necks. And then, Lord Guy, retire to your chateau and think on them no more.